South Carolina primary tests parties' core backers

Black Democrats enthusiastic; white evangelicals tepid over the GOP field

KEN HERMAN, Cox News Service

Published 5:30 am, Sunday, November 4, 2007

Photo: KEN HERMAN, COX WASHINGTON BUREAU

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"I never thought I would see this day where I can come out here and let everybody know I'm for a black man," Annie Bennett, 85, right, of Columbia, S.C., said at a recent Barack Obama rally.

"I never thought I would see this day where I can come out here and let everybody know I'm for a black man," Annie Bennett, 85, right, of Columbia, S.C., said at a recent Barack Obama rally.

Photo: KEN HERMAN, COX WASHINGTON BUREAU

South Carolina primary tests parties' core backers

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SPARTANBURG, S.C. — In South Carolina's black churches, election excitement is rising, divided between two Democratic presidential candidates seeking to make history.

In the state's largely white evangelical congregations, there is a palpable lack of love for the GOP field.

Each group makes up a sizable portion of the South Carolina electorate, making them potentially pivotal in the state's January primaries. But their significance goes beyond that.

"African-American Democrats and white evangelical Republicans are core groups in their respective parties, nationally," said Tom Baxter, editor of the Southern Political Report. "But in South Carolina they stand out in even brighter relief — it would be almost impossible there to win a Democratic presidential primary without winning over black voters, or to win a Republican primary without the white church vote. So South Carolina, peculiar though it may be, becomes a test of the national base for both parties."

Partisan joy

For many black Democrats in the Palmetto State, that test boils down to a choice between

Hillary Clinton
, a woman married to a white man once hailed as "the first black president."

At age 85, Obama backer Annie Bennett, standing near the Confederate battle flag on the statehouse grounds in Columbia, proclaimed her support with the joy of someone who has known the sorrow that once accompanied being a black woman in the South.

"I never thought I would see this day where I can come out here and let everybody know I'm for a black man," she said at an Obama rally. "Amazing things can happen."

Distaff politics

A day earlier, when Bill Clinton was in Spartanburg to rally support for his wife, 87-year-old
Lula Atchison
showed up and identified herself as a black woman more interested in seeing gender history made than racial history.

"She's a woman and I'm a woman," Atchison said in declaring her support for Clinton.

The black man seeking the job?

"He's OK," Atchison said. "Not for me. I'm just a one-track mind right now for Hillary because it's time for a woman to lead this country."

The enthusiasm expressed by the two octogenarian black Democrats is largely absent among white evangelicals looking for a candidate to back.

"I'm one of those Republicans that's really unhappy with the field," said David Cantrell of Greenville.

The excitement among black Democrats and ambivalence among white evangelical Republicans leaves both groups up for grabs, albeit in different ways, according to South Carolina political experts.

From Bill to Hillary?

Furman University
political scientist
Brent Nelsen
said polls indicate black women generally side with Clinton, while black men tend toward Obama.

Bill Clinton, Nelsen said, "connected with African-American women like no other politician since JFK. I think there's kind of a pass-through to Hillary of that."

Clemson University political scientist David Woodard, a GOP consultant, said all of the courting by Republican candidates has yet to lead to commitment from many evangelical voters.

"I think they are trying to find somebody they love," he said.

South Carolina evangelicals' dissatisfaction with the GOP field mirrors numbers in a recent Pew Research Center national poll. It found that 46 percent of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents rate the GOP field as fair or poor. The survey, done Oct. 17-23, also found that 55 percent of white Republican evangelicals would consider a third-party candidate if Rudy Giuliani and Clinton are the nominees.

Polls show that Democrats are more satisfied with their field, and there's no shortage of enthusiasm, albeit divided, among black Democrats in South Carolina, including many at politically vibrant churches.

"She's a chip off the old block," said Clinton-backer Pam Williams, a Greer accountant, making Bill the block.

Obama or Clinton

But at her Greater Bible Way Tabernacle Miracle Temple in Inman, Williams sees a congregation divided.

"A lot of people are saying vote for Obama because he is black," she said. "I don't think it's a race issue. It's more the experience."